May Musings

I forget how wonderful NOT writing articles all of the time truly is until I get to March, April and May. Come August and September I switch the other way.

Well, I guess I got the C2C/ASC “merger” by May wrong. I don’t like being wrong. Everything is really quiet. Like spooky quiet. If I had to bet now, then I’d bet against it happening. It only makes sense to me if the Baptist Four get really scared and determine they have no other option and do something else with their football programs. And typing that really doesn’t make any sense. There are schools that have the majority of their spots in one NCAA division and one or two in another. Colorado College is a great example of that (men’s hockey and women’s soccer play at the DI level). Could that even happen (not saying at the DI level mind you)? Sort of a rhetorical question but I know there are a number of football experts out there that may want to comment on it.

Unless it’s Southwestern’s Don Flora, I hate when a coach texts/emails me that they’ve added to their Points/Set numbers. Welcome to DIII, Jilienne Widener. Jilienne played at DI Brown University for the past three years going from 1.95 Points/Set to 3.05 Points/Set last year. She’ll now work on her masters at Johns Hopkins and help that team get even better. I’m still waiting to see if Pam Chiakpo comes back for her Super Senior year. If so then JHU will be at Juniata’s level.

Speaking of JHU and Juniata, you may know that Johns Hopkins owns the DIII consecutive match record at 66 straight wins. Well, Juniata is sitting on 62. There really is no chance that they won’t break the record and could smash it. Heck, I might even put money down that they hit three digits when it’s all said and done. There is just one small hiccup getting to 66. Juniata will actually play JHU in their 3rd match of the season after starting with Chris Newport and William Paterson. Sure, Chris Newport could trip them up but odds are Juniata will be sitting on 64 wins with JHU across the net trying to protect their record. Those matches will be at Chris Newport by the way so a neutral court.

“So, honey, for that Labor Day Weekend how would you like to take connecting flights to beautiful Newport News, Virginia?” Yeah, I’m going to have to work on that wording to have any chance.

Assuming Juniata gets by JHU for win number 65, it will be up to Ohio Northern (at Juniata) to stop the madness. A potential record-breaking win number 67 would be against Smith College (also at Juniata).

Another team loading up for Juniata is the University of La Verne. Well…I mean they are loading up for a tough SCIAC and the always tough CMS but they also have their sights set a little higher. This is really a team that could be looking at the Elite 8 this year. If you glance at the Recruiting page then you might notice that La Verne is sitting on 10 incoming players right now with four of them being transfers. Rumor has it that one more transfer may be coming into the program, too. That’s a lot of talent being added to a young team that lost in the regional finals to Oshkosh on their home court. They had 4 players listed as seniors (or Super Seniors) on the 2023 team and they would account for a 27% Points loss but it appears that’s not going to be hard to make up. The star there is Mya Ray (573.5 Points) and Coach Hendershot is definitely getting a supporting cast in place for what could be an historic season. Oh, did I mention that Mya’s sister (Mariah) will also be an incoming first-year? Go Leopards!

I got the Emily Foster hire to Occidental right and she has already subscribed to the website. Glad to see the SCIAC training program for new coaches has me on their to-do lists. I really think that’s going to be a great hire. Excited to see the traditional powers in the SCIAC get challenged by Oxy and Redlands (hired Savannah Cox last season) in the next couple years. I often say the SCAC is the deepest conference but that will probably change to the SCIAC especially with Southwestern and Trinity leaving next year.

I was looking at the NWC award winners the other day and it reminded me that the conference is really losing a lot of great players to graduation. Conference could be wide open in 2024.

Some interesting tidbits from my Latvian (by marriage) statistical expert on staff. PairWise (or NPI as the NCAA is calling it) uses a quality win bonus computation. UW-Oshkosh had 26 such wins last season. 224 teams had no (zero) quality wins. The average number of quality wins was 2.26. Teams that would have benefited with NPI used for selection last season were Virginia Wesleyan, UW-Platteville, Mary Hardin-Baylor and Ohio Wesleyan. Teams that could have seen a spot lost were Tufts, St Olaf, Williams and Mount Union. It really depends on the dials used so expect changes to that depending on what is ultimately used. Still, any system that had UMHB getting an at-large bid with their weak schedule in 2023 shouldn’t be used. Period. (UMHB had one quality win in 2023.) For undefeated teams, in NPI, the final number used is the best NPI number from a team you beat. So, in Juniata’s case last year (going undefeated) only one match is used for their ranking. Every other match is dropped and not considered.

I received a really interesting scatter chart that showed the relationship between SOS and NPI and Record and NPI that I want to share with you when I get more data. I just don’t have any control over these Latvians.

The last thing I wanted to write about is only going to get me in trouble. When I watch a volleyball match, occasionally a player will just stand out to me. It doesn’t mean the player is the best player on the court but there is just something that catches my eye (and, typically they are the best player on the court). Usually, it’s a high vertical or an element to their game that not many have. Graycee Mosley (ETBU) and Mya Ray (La Verne) are two examples of outstanding outsides that both got to show off on the national stage at the Oshkosh Regional last season and are just fun to watch. Georgia McGovern (CMS) is one of the best setters in the nation but she brings an explosive element that you don’t often see at DIII. Assuming Annie Lockett comes back healthy then Hope will have two remarkable players in her and Addie VanderWeide. It’s impossible for me to turn off a Hope match when Addie (in 2023) or Annie (in 2022) are on the front row. Juniata has a lot of great players but the one that catches my eye is Kennedy Christy (all-around game is outstanding with a stellar serve thrown in). Let’s add Jasmine Sells (another great all-around player) from WashU to the list. I’m not sure if Jazzy Innis (Berry) is coming back for a Super Senior year but she’s a high flyer that has turned into a great 6-rotation player. I know Oshkosh’s Riley Kindt is done but she’s a middle that I thought was just really smart and had a ton of shots. There are so many others but I love watching volleyball and it only gets better when one of these players is on the court. Lesser-known players also have that affect on me. Heck, every libero in the NWC is fun to watch. I will once again say that every school needs to recruit the Hawaiian kids as they always seem to excel in the NWC especially out of the libero position. Riley DeGroot (Whittier) is an outside that was fun to watch last year that needed more love from her conference (awards). With Southwestern, I love all of my granddaughters equally but Christina Kuras flies and hits a hard shot. With Trinity, it’s more like, “God, we have to deal with her 3 more years!?!” Falling into that category was Courtney Pope. Throw in Schreiner’s Giana Hilliard into that mix, too. There are so many others and this is where people will get mad at me because I can’t list them all (oh shoot…St Thomas’ Audrey Cataline, Pomona-Pitzer’s Paige Mountanos and Austin College’s Brianne Tseng are all players that are very different from each other but all bring something special to the court). Anyway, it’s not only the volleyball but these players (and others) that make it fun to write again come August. For now, it’s still May so don’t expect much although I have a note to check EADA data again. That’s my yearly article on DIII finances.